Posted
by
Roblimo
on Saturday April 09, 2011 @11:07AM
from the we-all-bow-before-the-mighty-Woz dept.

Google85 writes "Steve Wozniak told Reuters he would consider returning to an active role at Apple, the company he co-founded, and believes the consumer electronics giant could afford to be more open than it is."

"There's just an awful lot I know about Apple products and competing products that has some relevance, some meaning. They're my own feelings, though," said Wozniak, who is currently chief scientist of storage start-up Fusion-io.

Maybe you are joking, but I doubt that Woz needs to do that taking into account all the wives and girlfriends that he had in his life. Looks like his intelligence and good humor are the main source of his sex appeal.

He was a cofounder of Danger, Inc., I will put it has a one of his recent, post Apple note worthy achievements. Also, he has put a strong commitment toward education; I'm sure that the kids that he helped will remember him for the rest of their life.

Woz is more like a modern day Nikola Tesla. Steve Jobs is a strange mix of Jules Verne and Thomas Alva Edison. For Woz is more important to have fun doing what he does than being rich and famous. For Jobs, is quality and perfection. To each his own.

Hes' been teaching kids and giving speech since forever. He's actually a pretty good guy. Not so interested into making more money than he already has, or conquer markets. More into the human side of things, and into "doing the right thing" kind of stuff.

Answer it. What have YOU personally EVER DONE that even begins to rival that man's achievements, hmmm, You fucking transparent little blowhard? Have you done better before he did in computing? How about during his heights & even afterward currently?? It's literally amazing how you little armchair quarterbacks online have all this nerve to try to cast dispersions on those in this field or any other even remotely like it, when you & "your kind" haven't even EVER DONE A DAMN THING THAT OTHERS HAVE NOTED AS WELL IN PUBLICATIONS, NEWS, OR OTHER SUCH LIKE AVENUES AS GOOD OR BENEFICIAL. Big talkers the lot of you (not everyone here, just easily seen thru little asswipes like this fool is I replied to.)

Steve, Steve - please calm down. The stress isn't good for you. Probably not a good time to be wandering around Slashdot. Maybe you should stick to Macworld or Times.

So you don't think anyone other than a doctor has the right to speak out if someone who isn't a licensed physician is about to take over medical operations at the community medical center?

Sorry but there is no requirement that one be well qualified for a position before they are capable of determining that someone else is not. By that standard, nobody who isn't qualified to be president should be allowed to vote in the presidential election!

See? Not everyone associated with Apple has the same mantra as Steve Job's closed off bricks of user inaccessibility and locked down interfaces that tell the user they can't modify their own hardware or software without voiding a warranty. It took the judicial system to rule that it was legal to jail break an iPhone. I have a feeling that if Woz was still a major player in Apple's development and ways of thinking, this would have never been necessary. I say kick that turtle-neck wearing skeleton outta there and reinstate Woz as new Apple overlord!;)

You do realize that if they hadn't chosen an inept business model in the first place that we'd likely be complaining about Apple's monopoly over the desktop market, right? There were a lot of inept decisions which led to the near demise of Apple, but being too open wasn't really one of them. (Depending upon how you count allowing other manufacturers to make hardware that could run their OS

One of the reasons that Apple lost out was the lack of openness to the platform, there were other problems, but that wasn't helping them any.

Apple lost share when they began licensing Mac OS. Sure, they had made a lot of mistakes before that. But there is a good argument one of the best strengths of Mac OS was hardware lockdown which enabled more stable computing.

As soon as Apple stopped licensing Mac OS they started becoming profitable again.

Please don't pretend that every other electronics/computer manufacturer doesn't do exactly the same thing. It doesn't justify Apple's actions, but until I see you ranting about Dell or HP, I'll consider you a hypocrite.

Oh look, the new use of the word better I've heard all about, when what it means is worse. Unless someone else is out there building their professional grade laptops from solid hunks of aluminium so that bits don't fall off, which for damn sure lenovo ain't doing.

See? Not everyone associated with Apple has the same mantra as Steve Job's closed off bricks of user inaccessibility and locked down interfaces that tell the user they can't modify their own hardware or software without voiding a warranty.

I agree with you that jailbreaking should be legal but are you stating that Apple or any manufacturer should honor their warranties regardless of what modifications you made? Doesn't that set an unreasonable expectation of support? By logic, does Ford have to service your engine even if you've replaced it with a Chevy engine?

Depends on what you consider a modification. Installing or removing apps is not considered voiding the warrant. Changing the configuration using standard methods like the UI does not void the warranty. Replacing the OS with one that the technician has no experience and Apple has not tested with their hardware should void the warranty. Remember that some modifications could damage hardware. That innocuous setting that overclocks the processor migh inadvertently fry it if run too long. The problem is A

Software should have no possibility of fragging hardware and thus if the hardware is failing, then it should be covered under warranty. Of course, we all recall the LG Burner fiasco don't we? That's the one where LG was doing something screwy and not following the specs and people were fragging their burners under Linux.

In the case of support, if it's not a supported software configuration IE: linux on a Dell windows box, then I can see software support being unable/unwilling to help as it's an unsupported

Software should have no possibility of fragging hardware and thus if the hardware is failing, then it should be covered under warranty. Of course, we all recall the LG Burner fiasco don't we? That's the one where LG was doing something screwy and not following the specs and people were fragging their burners under Linux.

With software and hardware, any foolproof system can be defeated by ingenious fools. There's a reason why lawnmowers have warnings on them that you should lift while the thing is running. It seems like common sense but some idiot will think he can turn his lawnmower into a hedge trimmer. Of course lawnmowers could, at great expense, be designed so that keep idiots from cutting their hands but they would be so expensive that no one would buy them.

"But all I did was modify the software!". Nope, no warranty, since you put the engine outside of it's expected engine parameters. Maybe going extra fast made the engine really hot and melted it into a molten block of metal.

The burden of demonstrating that the failure was due to the modification is on the car maker, however.

(c) Prohibition on conditions for written or implied warranty;
waiver by Commission
No warrantor of a consumer product may condition his written or
implied warranty of such product on the consumer's using, in
connection with such product, any article or service (other than
article or service provided without charge under the terms of the
warranty) which is identified by brand, trade, or corporate name;
except that the prohibition of this subsection may be waived by the
Commission if -
(1) the warrantor satisfies the Commission that the warranted
product will function properly only if the article or service so
identified is used in connection with the warranted product, and
(2) the Commission finds that such a waiver is in the public
interest.

The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act was never intended to grant blanket immunity to any modification. Section (c) especially was made so that a manufacturer like Ford could not force you to use their service centers for all repairs large and small or risk voiding the warranty. It allows the existence of third party authorized service centers and subsection (1) gives the exception that necessary repairs should be done by the manufacturer (or authorized service center) to be covered by warranty.

The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act was never intended to grant blanket immunity to any modification. Section (c) especially was made so that a manufacturer like Ford could not force you to use their service centers for all repairs large and small or risk voiding the warranty. It allows the existence of third party authorized service centers and subsection (1) gives the exception that necessary repairs should be done by the manufacturer (or authorized service center) to be covered by warranty.

If you replaced the Ford engine with a Chevy one, a majority of what your warranty was designed to cover is null and void. Yes the interior is still covered but the engine is an essential part. Also you don't have to replace the whole engine. What if you put in custom intake manifolds? What if you replace the computer's programming with your own? Will Ford still cover your engine? It gets very tricky as (from the perspective of Ford), they cannot guarantee that your car will and should run like it

Most car companies consider an oil change maintenance and not a modification. And replacing the radio yourself does void the warranty on the radio. Unless the OP has specific instances of how hardware or software changes should not void the warranty, generally significant modifications do void warranties. Replacing the OS with another should delay any repair until the original OS is restored.

Wrong. It's the other way round. You, or whoever you're shilling for, has to provide a justification why it should. Software can't modify hardware[1], so if the hardware breaks then logically it cannot be the software's fault

Really you can't program a CPU to run continuously at 100% so that it overheats? You can't program the OS to continuously write bits on a SSD or flash memory so that it exceeds the lifetime writes? Software can cause hardware failure. I don't think it has ever been a dispute that if you significantly modify a product, it voids the warranty. What is in dispute is what constitute "significant". I would think that replacing the standard OS with your own is significant.

What is so bad about makeing it easier to swap the HDD in the imac / mini?What is so bad about desktop a system with imac power levels without a build in screen?

If apple does not want mini towers then lower the price of the base mac pro to $1500-$2000 or have a bigger mini system with a 7200RPM HDD at least (320GB-500GB) or SDD. Better video then on board video / intel video. AMD new on board video system in the cpu may be ok and desktop ram with 4gb at the base. Also have at least a desktop i5. NO i3 or i3 on board video.

But if apple where to have a mini tower have it with desktop i5 or i7, 2-4 HDD slots / bays, 4-6 ram slots (based on what chip set is used), pci-e X16 video slot + pci-e X16 slot (X4 speed) or TB port. Maybe have a higher system with room for dual video cards or just X16 + X16 (does not need to full X16 speed) + TB port.and 1-2 ODD bays.

The last time they licensed the operating system to non-Apple hardware it nearly killed the company.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone

I'd expect them to license the OS again approximately when hell freezes over.

As a tech support professional who supported a mixed environment of Mac clone desktops, Windows 95 desktops, and Sun Solaris servers in the mid-90s, however, I hope I'm wrong about this. That environment was a tech support full-employment act! We had four full time staffers doing tech suppo

The last time they licensed the operating system to non-Apple hardware it nearly killed the company.

It probably would be worse this time around since Apple now essentially uses industry standard hardware. Clone makers could take advantage of the economies of scale to introduce less expensive, and possibly higher perfuming, machines. They probably would not have quit the build quality of Apple but could get close enough that Apple would find it hard to maintain any significant price premium. OS sales probably wouldn't make up for the lost revenue to maintain development of OSX at its current level; so li

well apple can $100-$500 from there system price and still have nice systems.
The mac pro should be $1500-$2000.

Why? They clearly sell well at the current prices, and if you assume all the price cuts came from margin Apple would need to increase sells dramatically (2x, 3x, 5x?) just to make the same profit at the reduced margin.

What economy of scale? Your dim little mind is aware that Apple is currently one of the largest if not the largest PC maker in the world right? They have even beaten Dell once (haven't checked if Dell or HP has taken the lead again).

So what economy of scale? Someone going to sell Mac clones so successfully they outperform the largest makers by such a magnitude they can demand even sharper prices then Apple already can?

What economy of scale? Your dim little mind is aware that Apple is currently one of the largest if not the largest PC maker in the world right? They have even beaten Dell once (haven't checked if Dell or HP has taken the lead again).

So what economy of scale? Someone going to sell Mac clones so successfully they outperform the largest makers by such a magnitude they can demand even sharper prices then Apple already can?

Actually, in your haste to comeback with a witty put down (I'll grant you managed to be half way there) you failed to consider the PC market is much vaster than Apple alone. That's where the economies of scale come to play. Adding the ability to run OSX as well as Windows merely increases the number of units to amortize the HW development costs and increases the buy quantity.

While Apple is certainly large enough to command good prices, there are plenty of PC OEMS who build enough machines to get good prices as well; and they can spread engineering and developmental costs over a number of units beyond just those for one manufacturer. If Apple were to license their OS they'd have to make it work on generic MBs or provide the tools needed to adapt them to OSX (much as independent hackers did to create the Hackintosh). Imagine if Dell could load OSX on a $500 Insperion - the $900 Macbook looks real expensive; especially since Apple really sells the OS experience. If you can get that on a cheaper clone, even with a lower build quality, it becomes harder to justify buying Apple hardware. Once OSX is running on may cheap laptops and desktops Apple will come under significant pricing pressure (and have fewer units to amortize their costs as clones cut into their sales); as well as support issues as hardware combinations proliferate. Neither is in Apple's best interest; especially since they have managed to maintain premium pricing by avoiding becoming a commodity like PCs.

About half the desktop systems were Mac clones. No real Macs. And actually, in spite of the job security it wasn't that much fun supporting all these junky machines. From that job, I learned everything *not* to do.

There is an ongoing debate about the paradox of choice [wikipedia.org]. Apple has chosen less choice. It simplifies their product line for them. Remember Apple is selling to consumers in general and not specifically to geeks like you.

What is so bad about makeing it easier to swap the HDD in the imac / mini?
What is so bad about desktop a system with imac power levels without a build in screen?

The problem is you are only seeing from you, you, you. From Apple's perspective they have to compete in a very competitive market with Lenovo, Dell, HP, and others. They have distinguished themselves by picking which products and subsets of the market that will ensure they have customers. It's probably the reason they stopped making Xserves; they just wasn't enough market for them. Remember they have to employ engineers, support engineers, etc for every product. As a business they make product lines where they can have success and not ones where a small percentage like slashdot geeks care about.

If apple does not want mini towers then lower the price of the base mac pro to $1500-$2000 or have a bigger mini system with a 7200RPM HDD at least (320GB-500GB) or SDD. Better video then on board video / intel video. AMD new on board video system in the cpu may be ok and desktop ram with 4gb at the base. Also have at least a desktop i5. NO i3 or i3 on board video.

A Mac Pro is not a mini-tower desktop. It is a professional workstation. There's quite a difference between the two. A Mac Pro is designed for professionals to author photos, video, sound, graphics, etc. While you can write book reports in Word on them, that's not their intent. It's like asking why a heavy duty truck isn't good for transporting 6 people around. Different purposes, different designs.

But if apple where to have a mini tower have it with desktop i5 or i7, 2-4 HDD slots / bays, 4-6 ram slots (based on what chip set is used), pci-e X16 video slot + pci-e X16 slot (X4 speed) or TB port. Maybe have a higher system with room for dual video cards or just X16 + X16 (does not need to full X16 speed) + TB port.
and 1-2 ODD bays.

Basically you've described a system that every computer manufacturer makes. Why should Apple compete in a crowded market where the margins are pretty thin just to make you happy.

What's so bad about those choices is that they all involve design compromises. which make the machine larger, cost more, and don't exactly help with core markets. Thing is all these things you want... are not relevant in Apple's marketing strategy. There is no benefit to apple to compromise it's prime market just to make a dozen tech geeks who probably still won't buy the product happy.

Ya know, I've been an Apple fan (not fanboi!) and owner since the Apple 1, and I'm with the GP on this one. I'd LOVE to have an affordable Mac mini-tower with a few PCIe slots (3 would probably do), that cost closer to the iMac than the Mac Pro.

However, having said that, I'm pretty sure that when Thunderbolt catches on, we'll all (well, not ALL, this IS/. afterall!) start thinking OUTSIDE of the box...

Give that apple is sticking dual channel TB on their boxes, you're talking about 8x PCIe 2.0, which is plenty, even for the highest end modern GPUs (go check benchmarks – you see about a 0.5% drop in performance by going from 16x to 8x with a modern GPU). The bigger issue is latency on the long copper cable – but I'm dead certain we'll see external GPU solutions for macs.

ok but what about weak cpu power or the unused x8 lanes on the cpu that are better used for a video then makeing the video eat up all the TB bandwidth just for a card and can you even add a video card to the TB bus that is not on board as Intel said you can not use a ADD in TB card in a old system.

3. Wozniak continued and continues knowing this as his Apple wages/shares provide him a tidy sum.

It's easy to play the respected but impotent preacher. Especially useful when you are gain from what you preach against. Sorta like reading one of the tabloids go on a rant about exploitation of young girls and foreigners while the owner of the newspaper group publishes porn and employs lots of low wage

Your statement makes it sound like all he can do is design circuitry and code.

Although he is a brilliant designer/developer, his return would also breathe new life into the company's other engineers, and would, quite frankly, make the stock market a little less jittery about "what will happen to Apple" in Jobs' absence.

I think he should return in his prior role as "Apple Fellow", and do what he does best at this point: Spread good will, and provide a "You can't fire me!" foil to some of Jobs' more "form

That is why Apple dominates now, but it's not why it dominated then. I remember watching a documentary about the early Apples and Woz was a genius at reducing hardware cost to bring them down to budgets people could afford. He took what would normally cost thousands and cut chips and optimized software to make it cost hundreds. He was by far more essential to Apple then than Jobs' ideas of the user experience.

Today, that's simply not one of Apple's strengths - it probably hasn't been one since sometime in the 80s. There's plenty companies that can match Apple on producing an equivalent hardware platform. In fact, many have been technologically superior to Apple, they just haven't been nice to use. It's not the CPU or GPU or touchscreen or whatever that makes the iPhone/iPad a success and the Macs have gone native with the same Intel processors as most PCs. There's nothing on the technical side that will make or break Apple. I'm sure Woz could do a good job there at something, but he'd never be a very important man.

I have to agree with everyone that thinks the Woz wouldn't be a good fit for the current "Apple Way", since the man that was so devoted to the "User Experience" turned into the "Big Brother" that he railed against at the start, and now has his Users doing the "Lock Step" in chains!

Niche market? In the last 10 years Apple have seen their share price rise ~3200%, in the last quarter they were the 3rd biggest company in the world by market capitalization according to the FORBES 500 beaten only by ExxonMobil and PetroChina.

They brought science fiction style gadgets people dreamed of in the 90s to become the 'norm' to the point where you're almost expected to have an iPhone and an iPod. People are surprised when you don't have one. Apple entered a market that

Granted... it would have to be seriously updated to be a viable computing platform in today's market... to the point that it would effectively be an entirely new machine... but I dunno... there's something about the idea of Woz going back to Apple that makes me wax nostalgic... there was a time back when Wozniak was last working with Apple where they were saying "Apple 2 forever". I can't help but think it'd be kinda neat to see that name come back.

I just emailed Woz with an email I entitled "Storm a-brewin' over at Slashdot."

His instantaneous reply follows. When I asked him if I could Re-post it here, his reply was "PLEASE do that for me!"

So, here it is, straight from the Woz's Mouth, so to speak:

When I first saw the headlines it was just another totally wrong one. I did an interview in Brighton the other day with this female Reuters journalist. The entire interview was about Fusion-io, at the SQLbits European conference, with myself and David Flynn, our CEO. At the end she asked about whether I'd return to Apple and I thought and said "no" and told her some reasons it was impossible. So she sits there and asks "with all the exciting things going on at Apple, would you consider going back?"...I said "yes" but explained that it could not happen. What you read is based on the one "yes". So I didn't read a single article about it. I was on planes and am writing a speech now for a humanist award I'm receiving tonight in Boston and don't have time to get into this one. Too bad.

This reporter took notes by hand but I think the Fusion-io publicist Shannon might have recorded it.

Back in the day Woz's crucial role in creating Apple was as a creative and accomplished electronics designer. Creating things like the Apple ][ color display or floppy controller with minimal chip counts, and thereby making the product more functional/compitetive than most of the competition.

However, the market niche that Apple has nowadays carved for itself isn't based on low cost or unique functionality (even if a wizard designer could nowadays make much difference), but rather based on design and user ex

Wozniak is a master of technology and probably computer education. But he's no replacement for the single-minded obsession to detail that is Steve Jobs. However he would be a much nicer person to work for, and maybe he could be the unifing force behind the various heirs that Jobs would leave behind. Only caveat though.... he's no spring chicken himself.

Many consumers like Apple products because they make it easy to buy and consume content without glitches, but the closed system that makes this possible locks customers and media and software providers into Apple's proprietary iTunes online store and iOS operating system. Some critics compare it to Microsoft in that regard.

Yeah; if he's saying "it could afford to be more open" it sounds like he has a little bit of an agenda there which may not be aligned with the current direction Apple is going or its shareholder's best interests. So, despite other qualifications, he might not be the best guy for the job.

2. Knowing Woz since 1978, I can tell you that he is one of the most OPEN persons on the planet. If you ask him a question, he will answer, unless the answer requires divulging a secret R&D project, and then he can hardly contain himself! I remember having some phone conversations back around 1979 regarding some work on what was to eventually become the Lisa (yes, the article was dead wrong. He worked on the Lisa project, as well as the pretty much only designer of the Apple 1 and ][, as well as the principal naysayer regarding the reliability-killing overcomplexity of the Apple/// design!). And, everyone forgets that he is the principal designer of the Apple ][ gs; a machine that was sadly just a little too late to the party, but a DAMNED fine update!

And knowing Woz for as long as I have, I can also tell you that his answer was NOT "off-the-cuff". He puts thought into every question in every situation. That's just the the "engineer" in him.

I know Woz had an aircraft accident that resulted in brain damage. I have only ever found interviews and videos of him AFTER that accident. Does anyone know what he was like BEFORE the accident and how big a change in personality/problem solving he experienced?

Yes. I have known him since 1978.

It took him nearly two years after the plane accident to "snap out of if". in fact, a friend of mine that talked with him at a computer convention in Ohio about 3 or 4 years after the accident told me that Woz told a group of people at that convention that he was back to work at Apple, going through the motions every day, when suddenly, he looked down at his Hamilton Pulsar watch and realized that he had been in a fog for the past two years.